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The story of Pakistan is the story of missed opportunity. As I began to write about the history of this land, I could not help feeling a sense of an intertwining of personal and national destiny in what was necessarily an account of my own missed opportunities [...]

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By Klaus Dodds

If a week is a long time in politics then goodness knows what seven years represents in geopolitical terms. The publication of the second edition of the VSI to Geopolitics was a welcome opportunity to update and reflect on what has changed since its initial publication in 2007. Five issues loomed large for me in terms of the second edition.

First, the onset of a global financial crisis and the geopolitics of austerity deserved greater recognition. While much of the conversation focused on the failings of neoliberal globalisation and the banking/financial services sector, the financial crisis was also geographical and geopolitical in nature. Geographically, the impact and scope of crisis and austerity remains resolutely uneven with some communities and localities more exposed to debt, liability, loss and dispossession. The retrenchment of government spending and investment hit those communities highly dependent on public sector employment for example. Geopolitically, the financial crisis brought to the fore the manner in which some countries were represented and understood as financially reckless, political weak and incapable of reforming their economies. The so-called PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain) within the European Union context might be one such example of this geopolitical profiling but another might be the manner in which Cyprus was depicted as a source of ‘hot money’ from Russia and China, which was disrupting the capacity of the Cypriot government to make ‘necessary’ fiscal and political reforms to its economy and society.

Second, the ongoing legacies of the War on Terror needed further exposition. The recent rise of Sunni Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has generated a plethora of commentary much of which insists that the contemporary crises in Iraq and Syria are related to the deeply controversial invasion of Iraq in 2003 by a US-led coalition and a US-led strategy designed to use the invasion of Iraq as a way of introducing democratic transformation in the Middle East and Central Asia. What we now appear to face is a situation where the US and Iran might find they are able to collaborate with one another in a mutual goal of preserving the territorial integrity of Iraq (and perhaps also Syria). All of this seems far removed from the situation in January 2002 when President George W Bush described Iran as part of an ‘axis of evil’ with Iraq and North Korea. As critics noted at the time, this opportunistic labelling did not reflect the complex geopolitical circumstances surrounding those three states. And the refrain ‘states like these’ in the 2002 State of the Union Address by President Bush suggested that there might be even more to add to the list.

Third, the Edward Snowden revelations have highlighted the second edition had to talk more explicitly about an ‘invisible geopolitics’ or one perhaps barely visible to those of us not well connected to the intelligence community. While few would have been surprised by the rise of a surveillance culture post 9-11 in the US and UK (for example), it took these revelations to bring home quite how involved the communications sector was in enabling these mass surveillance cultures. Had popular culture, including films such as Enemy of the State (1998), offered us a pre-warning of the kind of surveillance capabilities that might be brought to bare on domestic citizens? What might the implications be for citizens to express geopolitical dissent in a world where telephone conversations and electronic conversation might be capable of being recorded, analysed and actioned?

Fourth, a new chapter on objects is introduced for the express purpose of focussing attention on the materiality of geopolitics. In other words, stuff. Whether it be either the CCTV camera on the high street or the flag being waved at an official ceremony, geopolitics is made possible by our relationship to objects. In the midst of the 2014 World Cup, it is difficult to avoid the sight of various national flags fluttering from buildings and cars, and being waved vigorously by supporters. In the contexts of mega events such as the Olympics and World Cups, the flag is an essential accomplice to host governments eager to capitalise on such global media exposure while at the same demanding ever more investment in security projects designed to safe-guard participants, spectators and the interests of government sponsors. But the flag can also matter in more mundane ways as well; the flag that might hang from someone’s house barely noticed but a powerful marker of geopolitical possibilities which extend far beyond national identification.

Fifth, and finally, the second edition was a welcome opportunity to remind readers that geopolitics is always embodied. It is not abstract. It is not something merely preoccupied with the global. It is a subject matter that is resolutely everyday. Geopolitics is about the various ways the geographies of politics are made to matter and the manner in which the local, national, regional and global co-constitute one another. Feminist geographers have been at the vanguard of this realisation and demonstrating how bodies, sites, objects and practices are inter-linked to one another and capable of producing very real consequences for people, communities and environments. The border and associated border regimes provide a rich source of material; linking border control/policing ideologies to the mobility and vulnerability of bodies. Sites and environments matter as anyone who has attempted to cross the US-Mexican border or the Mediterranean in a ramshackle boat would testify. For many of those migrants the journey itself will be one they won’t survive.

Professor Klaus Dodds is Professor of Geopolitics at Royal Holloway University of London. Since publication of Geopolitics: A Very Short Introduction, he has co-edited three books, Spaces of Security and Insecurity (2009), Observant States: Geopolitics and Visual Culture (2010), and The Ashgate Handbook on Critical Geopolitics (2012). He has also written The Antarctic: A Very Short Introduction. The new edition of Geopolitics: A Very Short Introduction

The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday, subscribe to Very Short Introductions articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS, and like Very Short Introductions on Facebook.

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Image credit: © Marie-Lan Nguyen / CC-BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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By Geoffrey S. Corn

Eleven years ago this month the US-led military coalition crossed the ‘line of departure’ from Kuwait into Iraq. The full spectrum dominance of these forces produced a rapid victory over the Iraqi armed forces. Unfortunately, winning the peace turned out to be far more complex than winning the war (although for the Americans who bore the burden of securing that initial victory there was certainly nothing ‘easy’ about it). Not long after defeating organized enemy resistance, coalition forces began the long process of occupation, counter-insurgency, and return to full Iraqi sovereignty. Each phase of this overall effort seemed to produce never-ending operational and tactical challenges, all of which were mirrored by associated legal challenges.

The Iraq campaign was not, however, conducted in a strategic vacuum. Instead, it was part of a broader US effort to disrupt and disable al Qaeda, the transnational terrorist organization responsible for the devastating September 11th attacks. But while perhaps strategically linked to this broader effort, Iraq was – at least for the most part – an operationally distinct effort, at least at the initial stage prior to the rise of al Qaeda Iraq. What is more significant is that unlike the so-called ‘war on terror’, Iraq was much more of a ‘conventional’ fight, generating legal issues that had been contemplated and addressed in international humanitarian law. Coalition forces followed well-established rules related to conduct of hostilities, belligerent occupation, and detainee capture, status, and treatment.

This last category of operational and tactical challenges – dealing with captives and detainees – unfortunately generated what might legitimately be characterized as the My Lai of the Iraq war: the detainee abuse incident at Abu Ghraib. This incident created a media firestorm and generated unquantifiable levels of criticism of US efforts. Much worse was the negative strategic impact, with the Abu Ghraib abuse incident is perhaps the most significant strategic debacle of the war, and provided a major stimulant to the then nascent Iraqi insurgency.

Why Abu Ghraib happened was and will continue to be debated for years to come. While the abuse of al Qaeda detainees captured and held outside Iraq was without question responsive to legal opinions and resulting policy decisions emanating from the highest levels of the US government, these policies never explicitly extended to Iraq. It does seem clear, however, is that the prohibitory effect of the law of war, and the Geneva Conventions more specifically, had been diluted for the US soldiers entrusted with the responsibility to manage and control this detention facility. This dilution ultimately contributed to gross abuses of detainees within the control of the United States and at the complete mercy of their captors. Abuse of power over such individuals should, and must always, engender outrage and condemnation, not merely because of the blatant violation of fundamental humanitarian protections, but because such misconduct is a derogation of the most basic notions of soldier professionalism.

There are important lessons to learn from this incident. These range from the strategic debacles that often flow from violations of the law of armed conflict, to the true meaning of ‘responsible command’ – training, supervising, and correcting subordinates to ensure compliance with all commands, including respecting legal obligations. However, there is another lesson to be drawn from this unfortunate episode: the danger of dehumanization.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld takes a tour of the Abu Ghraib Detention Center in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, on May 13, 2004. Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard B. Myers are in Iraq to visit the troops in Baghdad and Abu Ghraib. DoD photo by Tech. Sgt. Jerry Morrison Jr., U.S. Air Force. Public domain via defense.gov.

Every US soldier assigned to the Abu Ghraib prison, like every other US service-member who entered the Iraq theater of operations, was instructed to comply with the Geneva Conventions. It was part of their pre-deployment training; it was incorporated into Rules of Engagement cards; it was incorporated into command directives and orders. However, during this same time the United States was prosecuting another conflict against al Qaeda. Unlike the rules applicable to detainees at Abu Ghraib who were subject to the protections of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the conflict against al Qaeda involved no analogous emphasis on Geneva compliance. Instead, leaders at the highest level of US civilian and military organizations repeatedly emphasized that this enemy was composed of, ‘unlawful’ combatants — individuals who had no legitimate claim on the humanitarian protections of the laws and customs of war. Unlike a ‘legitimate’ enemy, this enemy could be subjected to detention and treatment conditions inconsistent with the most basic principle of humane treatment. In short, US forces were applying a genuine double-standard: detainees — whether military or civilian — considered ‘legitimate’ received the benefit of the law; those considered ‘illegitimate’ did not.

Encouraging soldiers to view certain enemies as unworthy of the most basic principles of humanity is a recipe for disaster. War involves an inherent need to dehumanize your opponent, an unfortunate necessity to enable soldiers to engage in the even more unfortunate necessity of killing on demand. Most moral beings are naturally averse to killing, and when doing so is not triggered by the survival instinct in response to an imminent threat, that aversion must be overcome. Dehumanization of the enemy serves this purpose.

But these same warriors must be capable of flicking the proverbial humanity switch, restoring the enemy to a status of human being at the moment the enemy is subdued. This is an even more complex task. Asking a soldier to show human mercy to an enemy, who, only moments prior was just trying to kill him, or perhaps just killed his best friend, is an immense leadership challenge. That challenge is facilitated by bright-line rules of war, rules that aid the warrior in navigating this moral abyss.

Diluting the clarity of these bright line rules is, therefore, terribly dangerous. These rules dictate to soldiers and their leaders that engaging in hostilities is, in the ultimate analysis, not ‘personal’, but instead an obligation imposed by the State or the non-state group. Thus, in a very real sense, the soldier is not acting in an individual capacity, but as the agent of the military organization ordering the soldier to participate in hostilities. In this capacity, the soldier is restrained from allowing the natural human instincts of vengeance and retribution to undermine the objectives of the organization writ large. The principle of humanity, when extended to captured opponents, implements this core tenet of organized hostilities; the struggle cannot be treated as personal.

There is a lesson that transcends the reminder that detainee abuse incidents produce profound strategic and tactical negative consequences. That lesson is that preservation and reinforcement of the bright line rules of humanity in warfare demand that distinctions between ‘categories’ of captured opponents must not be intended or perceived as a justification for treatment inconsistent with this core principle. When this occurs, the dilution may and often will very quickly infect the treatment of individuals granted a more protective status. This is precisely what happened when the United States authorized abusive treatment of unlawful combatants. Although none of the detainees in Iraq fell into that category, the broader message signaled by senior US (mainly civilian) leaders was clear: some captives are unworthy of the full protection of the law of armed conflict. Did this contribute to the inhumane treatment inflicted upon Iraqi detainees? It seems almost self-evident that the answer is yes. What beyond any doubt is that this could not have helped reinforce commitment to the legal obligations that so clearly applied to these victims.

Telford Taylor wrote several decades ago that war does not provide a license to kill; it imposes a duty to kill. But that duty is imposed by the State, and it is subordination to the interests of the State that defines warrior professionalism and permeates the restrictions imposed on warriors by the law of armed conflict. These restrictions serve both military and humanitarian interests, by protecting individuals from gratuitous violence and by facilitating mission accomplishment through the mitigation of resentment and disdain among opponents and potentially hostile civilian populations. But it is easy to understand why these restrictions may frequently be perceived as counter-intuitive for individuals engaged in mortal combat who must, in order to overcome the human aversion to killing, dehumanize their opponents. The States and military leaders who demand this conduct from men and women must, therefore, be vigilant in reinforcing these bright lines and avoid the temptation to extend the dehumanization that is an unfortunate necessity of pre-submission encounters with the enemy to their post-submission treatment. If this is a lesson learned from the Abu Ghraib debacle, then some good will ultimately be derived from that sad incident.

Geoffrey S. Corn is Presidential Research Professor of Law, South Texas College of Law; Lieutenant Colonel (Retired), U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps. Prior to joining the faculty at South Texas, Professor Corn served in a variety of military assignments, including as the Army’s senior law of war advisor, supervisory defense counsel for the Western United States, Chief of International Law for U.S. Army Europe, and as a tactical intelligence officer in Panama. He is the co-author of The War on Terror and the Laws of War: A Military Perspective with Michael Lewis, Eric Jensen, Victor Hansen, Richard Jackson, and James Schoettler.

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By Susan Herman Post-9/11 surveillance measures have made it far too easy for the government to review our personal and business records, telephone and e-mail conversations, and virtually all aspects of our lives. For example, Under the so-called “library provision” of the

Carl R. Weinberg Editor, Magazine of History On Tuesday March 11, 2003, I was working in my office at North Georgia College and State University (NGCSU), when I received an email that I will never forget. It was sent to all faculty and staff on the campus listserv from one of my colleagues on the subject of “America's Defense.” His email noted that some of our

Publishers Weekly calls Amitava Kumar’s forthcoming A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb a searching and humane look at the U.S. war on terror.

Richard English was born in 1963 in Belfast, where he is Professor of Politics at Queen’s University. He is a frequent media commentator on Irish politics and history, and on terrorism, including work for the BBC, ITN, Sky News, NPR, Newsweek and the Financial Times. His latest book is Terrorism: How to Respond, which draws on over twenty years of conversations with terrorists themselves, and on analysis of a wide range of campaigns - Algeria, Bader Meinhof, The Red Brigade, ETA, Hezbollah, the IRA, and al-Qaeda - to offer both an authoritative, accessible analysis of the problem of terrorism, and a practical approach to solving it. In the original post below, Professor English lays out what he sees as the seven key elements in responding to terrorist violence.

This summer’s fatal terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, Spain and Iraq in their various ways reflect a paradoxical reality: despite the unprecedented efforts made since 9/11 to combat terrorist violence, the terrorist problem remains at least as prevalent as it was before the commencement of the ‘War on Terror’.

Indeed, the situation has in some ways grown worse. The number of terrorist incidents recorded globally in 2001 was 1732. By 2006 – five years into the War on Terror – the figure had risen to 6659. The monthly fatality rate from terrorism in the years immediately preceding 9/11 was 109; in the five years after 9/11, the monthly death-toll from terrorism rose to 167 (and this excluded deaths from attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq – with those included, the monthly death-toll rose to 447).

Of course, there are no easy solutions to the terrorist problem. The longevity of this form of violence is a testament to that. But this long history of terror is, perversely, a tremendous resource as we seek to deal with this global, murderous challenge. For we do, in fact, have a huge body of experience to draw on as we consider how best to deal with the terrorist threat. There are – or should be – a long list of ‘known knowns’ in terms of what we should and should not do about terrorism.

The difficulty tends to be this: each state faces each its own new terrorist crisis in effectively amnesiac fashion. Depressingly for those of us who research the history of terrorism, the same mistakes tend to be made each time, as though the lessons required re-learning. I remember a conversation with a scholar in Washington DC in 2006, in which I suggested that the US might have learned far more than it apparently had about how to deal with terrorism, from historically-informed scrutiny of what other states had been through. ‘Ah, but we have to see our own crisis as exceptional,’ I was told. This is, perhaps, true enough as a depiction of prevalent opinion. But it is no less depressing, and damaging, for that.

In 2003 I published a history of the IRA. At that time, the IRA was in the process of leaving history’s stage just as the post-9/11 crisis meant that terrorism itself was becoming a global preoccupation as never before. So it seemed worthwhile to try to set out the lessons of history – Irish, but also drawn from other settings – in a systematic and accessible way, to try to address the problem of what we should do when the next terrorist crisis strikes.

My argument as a result of that process is that we can only effectively respond to terrorism if we learn the lessons of terrorism’s long history, but that we can only learn those lessons if we adopt a proper means of explaining terrorism, and that we can only explain it if we are honest and precise about exactly what terrorism is in the first place. So, what is terrorism? Why do people resort to terror? What can we learn from terrorism past? How should we respond?

The seven key elements in a response to terrorist violence, as I see them, are:

First, learn to live with it. Politicians have all too often tried to give the impression of a resolve to uproot terrorism altogether, which is self-defeating and unrealistic. Individual terrorist campaigns will come to an end, terrorism itself will not, and our best approach is to minimize and contain it.

Second, where possible, address the root causes and problems which generate awful terrorist violence. This will not always be possible (neither the goals of the Baader-Meinhof group nor of Osama bin Laden could be delivered). But there are moments in history when effective compromise can be reached, normally after terrorist groups themselves recognize that their violence is not bringing anticipated victory, and that a turn to more conventional politics makes sense.

Third, avoid an over-militarization of response. There is an understandable temptation after terrorist atrocities to respond with military muscle, and this can have beneficial effects. It has also, on very many historical occasions, back-fired, with rough-handed military action and occupation stimulating that very terrorism which it was intended to stifle.

Fourth, recognize that high-grade intelligence is the most effective resource in combating terrorist groups. From 1970s Germany to 1990s Northern Ireland there have been many cases where intelligence has decisively aided the constraining of terrorist campaigns.

Fifth, adhere to orthodox legal frameworks and remain wedded to the democratically produced framework of law. All too often the Abu Ghraib pattern has been evident, with the state transgressing the line which distinguishes its own legal activity from illegal brutality: such transgressions tend to strengthen rather than undermine terrorist violence.

Sixth, ensure the coordination of security, financial, technological and other counter-terrorist efforts, both between different agencies of the same state, and between different states allied in the fight against terrorist violence.

Seventh, maintain strong credibility of public response. Any resort to implausible caricatures of one’s enemies will prove counter-productive among that constituency which is potentially supportive of terrorist violence but likely – if presented with credible alternatives – to recognize the futility as well as the appalling bloodiness of terrorist action.

All of the above points were ignored during the post-9/11 response of the War on Terror, and each of these errors has made our current position more difficult.

Yuval Ginbar is a scholar and human rights activist, and has recently written a book for us called Why Not Torture Terrorists?: Moral, Practical and Legal Aspects of the “Ticking Bomb” Justification for Torture. In the post below he gives his opinions on the Israeli academics who support the use of torture in the “war on terror” and are seeking its legitimization.

Apologies. What follows are not sensational revelations about Israel’s secret involvement in torture worldwide (though there have been some reports to that effect). I am referring to a possibly less exciting phenomenon, which is all in the public domain. To me, however, it is no less worrying: Israel has produced a surprising yield of academics who support torture and seek its legitimization, if not legalisation. Publishing widely, including in the most prestigious journals and publishing houses, they advocate the use of interrogational torture in the “war on terror”.

There are variations, of course. One favours torture to be authorized by a “public committee” – a variant of Alan Dershowitz’ “torture warrants” idea. Others propose allowing “only” methods that are “short of torture,” including one who attempts to show Americans how some forms of “coercive interrogation” would accord with their Constitution. However, the methods that the “torture lite” academics recommend, such as sleep and sensory deprivation, become by all accounts - legal, “common sensical” and factual - full torture, at least over time. No - guidance on how interrogators would know when to stop are not attached. Nor are any examples of how such methods were used without becoming torture. This is because no such examples exist.

But perhaps the speciality of pro-torture Israeli academics is devising schemes which would, they say, enable an absolute legal prohibition on torture to co-exist with allowing its use in “ticking bomb situations” – a “relativized” absolute prohibition, as one of them (seriously) quipped. Some have proposed that while torture should be prohibited by law absolutely, if a leader orders torture in extreme situations, his act would later undergo “ex post-facto ratification”. Others propose a modification of deontological morality so as to allow torture in extreme situations, as long as it is not “officialized”.

However heavily endowed with academic titles the writers are, however extensive and thorough their research is, and however rich their essays and books are with references, cases and footnotes, the results are invariably absurd, as the very combination they seek is self-contradictory. In my book I analyse several of these “have-your-cake-and-eat-it” solutions. Actually, perhaps a more apt – and updated -description would be the “yeah-but-no-but” approaches to torture. They ultimately make as much sense as Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard.

All this could all have been quite amusing were it not for the fact that such scholars – and other, non- Israeli ones, of course - are advocating that our officials be allowed, through one moral or legal scheme or another, to inflict excruciating pain on helpless prisoners, demolishing in the process an international legal and moral consensus it took humanity hundreds of years to achieve. And were it not for the fact that a “yeah-but-no-but” torture system, which most of the Israeli academics are in effect modelling their proposals on, is actually in operation – you guessed it – in Israel.

In 1999 Israel’s Supreme Court prohibited issuing the General Security Service (GSS) with instructions on how to inflict what was euphemistically called “moderate physical pressure” on Palestinian detainees, as had been the custom until then, and ruled that GSS agents cannot be authorized to inflict such “pressure”. The Court cited the absolute prohibition on torture in international law. So far so good. However, when it comes to “ticking-time bomb” situations, the Court ruled that the case of a GSS interrogator who tortures (the Court too preferred a euphemism: “applied physical interrogation methods”) would then be considered by the Attorney-General, and if need be by the courts, where “his potential criminal liability shall be examined in the context of the ‘necessity’ defence” – a criminal law defence which, as currently held in Israeli law, justifies actions in extreme situations if they produce the “lesser evil”.

The result has been predictable. Within a couple of years the GSS itself was admitting it was torturing – oops! – euphemism time again: using “exceptional interrogation measures” – in dozens of cases annually. All were cases of “ticking bombs”, of course. Figures from human rights NGOs, such as the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, have been much higher. Number of GSS interrogators convicted of torturing (or any other offence)? Zero. Prosecutions? Zero. Criminal investigations? Zero. Once introduced as a means of legitimizing torture, the “ticking bomb” and its legal corollary, the “necessity defence”, have overwhelmed the system.

Israel is not the focus of my book, but of the four “models of legalized torture” described and analysed there, two have, unfortunately, been in operation in Israel, in one form or another. Then there is the “torture warrants” model. The fourth is, of course, the US model.

But what about the big questions? Is ‘waterboarding’ or (perhaps more importantly) other, less blatant interrogation techniques considered torture under international law? Does international law allow the use of painful techniques falling short of torture, or the use of the “necessity defence” to exonerate torturers? What happens to a state, morally and practically, once it allows anti-terrorist torture? And – maybe the biggest question - would it not be morally justifiable to torture terrorists in order to save many innocent lives in “ticking bomb situations”? In other words – Why Not Torture Terrorists?

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